Settimo Cielodi Sandro Magister

The Communists the Pope Likes. And Vice-versa

[ Emphasis and {commentary} in red type by Abyssum ]

In recent days a couple of surprising things have happened in Rome. And they are instructive in their way.

The first is the beginning of the collaboration with “Avvenire,” the newspaper of the Italian episcopal conference, of the satirical comics author Sergio Staino, with a Sunday strip entitled “Hello, Jesus!”

Here the surprise lies in the fact that Staino is an unwavering communist, was a “flower child” and a champion of free love, was until a few months ago the director of “L’Unità,” the defunct newspaper of the Italian communist party and then of the parties that succeeded it, and is the honorary president of the UAAR, the Union of Atheists and Rationalist Agnostics.

The absentminded Jesus of his strips still lives in Nazareth with Joseph and Mary, gives his father a hand in the woodshop, but his head is already elsewhere, looking to the time when he will leave to finally become – in Staino’s words – “the first of the socialists, the first to fight for the poor.”

Interviewed in “Avvenire” on the day of his debut, Staino recounted that some time ago, when Pope Francis, during a “long telephone conversation” with Slow Food founder Carlo Petrini, was told that back in 1948 Staino’s mother had been denied sacramental absolution for having voted for the communist party, the pope burst out laughing: “Tell the mother of this friend of yours that I will give her that absolution.”

This does not change the fact that his {Staino’s} arrival has provoked a deluge of protests. Including that of the newspaper’s editor, in the person of the secretary general of the Italian episcopal conference, Bishop Nunzio Galantino, whose words were reported to the readers of “Avvenire” by the paper’s director, Marco Tarquinio: “I do not agree, because I do not understand just what added value comes to our newspaper from Staino’s strips.”

And it is precisely here that the instructive part of the affair can be grasped. Because now there is proof that Galantino’s power over the episcopal conference and over its newspaper no longer counts like it did when Pope Francis appointed him secretary general and de facto his sole lieutenant, with the effect that every word and decision of his came down as if from the pope himself.

Today the episcopal conference has a new president in the person of Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti, who indeed for his part is very close to Francis and much more skillful in understanding and seconding his wishes.

While Galantino’s fall from the pope’s graces is still more evident, and the Staino case is glaring proof of this.

Not only, in fact, did the director of “Avvenire” decide on his own, without having “asked for authorization beforehand from the editor,” but he defended in the pages of “Avvenire” the justice of this decision of his, moreover making public the uninfluential contrary opinion of Bishop Galantino.

To whom he said goodbye at the very moment he was welcoming Staino, for his part “absolved” by Pope Francis.

*

The second episode saw another newspaper in the leading role, “Il Manifesto,” the only one in Italy that proclaims alongside its masthead: “Communist daily.”

On Thursday, October 5 – such a coincidence, right at the hundredth anniversary of the “October Revolution” – “Il Manifesto” went to the newsstands with a book containing three speeches by Pope Francis to the “popular movements,” which he convened for the first time in Rome in 2014, then in Bolivia in 2015, and then again in Rome in 2016.

Interviewed by “Avvenire,” the director of “Il Manifesto,” Norma Rangeri, explained the decision:

“We feel these messages of the pope to be our own, and we want to bring to our readers the radicality and simplicity of these words of his. […] They contain a new idea of politics, the pope also cites Esther Ballestrino de Careaga, for her conception of politics. She is a communist of Paraguayan origin.” (And she was a chemistry teacher of the young Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who met her two daughters during his visit to Paraguay, in July of 2015).

The readers of Settimo Cielo are already extensively informed about Francis’s speeches to the “popular movements” and his political vision:

But further information can be gleaned from their publication by “Il Manifesto.” Because in the book, in addition to the speeches, there are an interview and a postscript that enhance the overall picture, the first with the Argentine Juan Grabois and the second by the Italian scholar Alessandro Santagata.

Grabois, 34, the son of an historic Peronist official, today directs the Confederación de Trabajadores de la Economía Popular and has been close to Bergoglio since 2005, meaning since the then-archbishop of Buenos Aires was at the head of the Argentine episcopal conference. After he became pope, Francis appointed him as a consultant to the pontifical council for justice and peace, now absorbed into the new dicastery for promoting integral human development. And he, Grabois, is the most active in tying together the threads of the convocations of the “popular movements” around the pope.

The idea began to take shape immediately after Francis’s election. After the inaugural Mass of the new pontificate – at which there was also present in the front row, along with the heads of state, the Argentine Sergio Sánchez, head of the Movimiento de Trabajadores Excluidos – Grabois says that he was contacted by Archbishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, chancellor of the pontifical academy of sciences, he too Argentine and more impatient than ever to enter into the circle of the new pope’s favorites.

Sorondo asked Grabois to help him organize a seminar at the Vatican entitled “Emergenza esclusi,” which was held in December of 2013 and was attended by Joao Pedro Stédile, leader of the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra in Brazil.

This seminar was the preview of the subsequent first convocation around Pope Francis in Rome of the “popular movements,” a network of a hundred organizations from all over the world but mostly from Latin America, to a large extent the same as at the memorable anti-capitalist and anti-globalization gatherings in Seattle and Porto Alegre.

To organize this and the subsequent meetings, a committee was created made up of Grabois, Stédile, and two other activists: Jockin Arputham of the National Slum Dwellers Federation and Charo Castelló of the Mouvement Mondial des Travailleurs Chrétiens. Plus the Jesuit Michael Czerny, now the undersecretary of the department of migrants and refugees at the dicastery for integral human development, a department over which Pope Francis has retained personal managerial authority. In Grabois’s judgment, the role of Fr. Czerny has so far been “of vital importance for connecting with the various popular organizations.”

In the book published by “Il Manifesto,” both Grabois and Santagata point out that many of the “popular movements” on which the pope relies are critical toward the Church as an institution and opposed to Catholic dogmas on questions like abortion or homosexual rights. But “such contradictions do not affect the work of the meetings too much, because this is focused on specific issues related to the struggle for land, housing, and work.”

A fourth convocation of the “popular movements” was scheduled for Caracas in October of this year. But it was postponed on account of the disaster into which Venezuela has plunged.

In compensation they began to hold meetings not on a global but on a regional scale. The first was held in Modesto, California from February 16-19 of 2017 for the movements of the United States. Another was held from June 20-21 in Cochabamba, Bolivia, for the movements of Latin America.

With the encounter in Modesto, Pope Francis took part by videoconference, reading a speech perfectly in line with the three previous ones.

He didn’t show up, however, for those who came to Cochabamba. But with regard to these meetings on a regional scale, Santagata writes:

“As [Vittorio] Agnoletto told me, at the last meeting at the Vatican criticisms were raised over this proposal of building networks that, in his judgment, risk giving rise to a series of ‘empty boxes’ in competition with the organization of the World Social Forum.”

Agnoletto, elected in 2004 to a five-year term in the European parliament among the ranks of Rifondazione Comunista, was for a long time an Italian representative on the international board of the World Social Forum created in Porto Alegre, and has taken part in various meetings at the Vatican on these issues.

Between the World Social Forum and the “popular movements” dear to Pope Francis there is in fact increasing friction. In the judgment of Grabois, the former “has betrayed its essence to transform itself into a sequence of rituals or tourist activities for militants.”

While the latter, the movements blessed by the pope, would be today the only ones capable of “promoting the communal organization of the excluded to build from the bottom up the humane alternative to a marginalizing globalization.” Even at the cost of straying from the “strict confines of official democracy” and adopting “practices that could be criminalized by states.”